


almost forgotten

by timelordswillwasteyou



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, M/M, Sarumi Fest 2018, the demon AU where they somehow have less issues than in canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 15:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15246537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timelordswillwasteyou/pseuds/timelordswillwasteyou
Summary: Yata isn't expecting a standard drug bust to lead to him to an old friend he thought to be lost. But Saruhiko isn't the same as he used to be...or is he?Written for Sarumi Fest 2018, Day 2: Alternate Universe. Also ontumblr.





	almost forgotten

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [tenetur a capite ad calcem](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510651) by [Keibey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keibey/pseuds/Keibey). 



> I would like to do so much more with this (I had a lot more planned actually) but the motivation train left the station without me this week (month. ...year) and I wanted to post something for sarumi fest so have this halfhearted demon AU.
> 
> this is based on Saruhiko being experimented on and turned into an incubus, which is not how it works even in fake history (mythology), but you'll soon find that's not the only liberty I took with incubus lore. Nevertheless, if you're totally unfamiliar with the concept, a short summary can be found [here](http://www.occultopedia.com/i/incubus.htm), but basically it's a male demon that depends on sexual energy for sustenance. basically everything else - appearance, character, needs, personality, abilities, etc. - I pulled from my head based on what I thought would be cool for this particular pairing (though one part is inspired by a Seraph ability in Tales of Zestiria....you'll know what I mean when you get there, if you're familiar with that series).
> 
> unedited; sorry for any mistakes.
> 
> loosely inspired by a (much more well-written) [orangebat thing](https://archiveofourown.org/series/167279) I read a while ago.
> 
> Now that you have way too much information for how short this is, enjoy!

The underground facility is dark and damp, and the wet sound of groundwater dripping from the ceiling and down the perfect paint of the walls permeates the air. The juxtaposition is unsettling, especially since, even through the humid air and several layers of concrete, Yata thinks he can hear the horrible moaning of the experimental subjects being kept here.

When the Homra special investigative unit had received a tip that the Jungle cartel used this facility to test new drug formulas on human subjects, they had expected it to be a straightforward drug bust: With a small team of special agents, arrest anyone on site (no interrogating allowed offsite; all suspects are to be taken directly into Homra custody and trialed and imprisoned at a later time) and perform a sweep of the place and confiscate all cartel property and operations – all in a couple hours’ work, usually. But Yata and his partner had been able to tell right away that this run was different. They couldn’t see the facility when they arrived, for one; had needed to confirm and then reconfirm that their coordinates read right before eventually discovering an entrance, tucked inside the bottom of an old well, which led to an expansive underground structure that made no effort to hide the opulence upon which it was built. The walls shone a brilliant green, the floors and ceilings were painted a bright white that made Yata’s head hurt, and gold-trimmed furniture decorated every room. It was odd, to say the least, of a facility they believed to be a simple drug den to look this way.

Stranger, however – and much more worrying, in Yata’s opinion – was the lack of security or any apparent personnel on the grounds. He thought at first that perhaps Jungle believed their well-hidden entrance and lack of any evidence of the operation on the surface provided them enough security in itself. But it is clear they don’t lack the funding to hire at least a guard for the entrance and a few for the top floor, so why not do it? Besides, they had found rooms on one of the lower floors which appeared to be dormitories, all with evidence of recent inhabitation: Unmade beds, shoes thrown halfway under mattresses, lockers full of clothes and other belongings and, most revealing, a large floor locker of the small but powerful pistols preferred by Jungle and plenty of ammunition to fuel them. Clearly, the place is guarded by some sort of security force, which means that either they all happened to take the same day off, or…

“No ash!” comes a shout from the end of the hall. Shit; that’s Kamamoto’s voice – they had been trying to estimate how many guards they could possibly expect as well as investigate how to get down to the lower floors, where Homra was told the human subjects are kept. He hears a call of his name again, and then the sound of footsteps – more noise than just one person’s would make – thundering toward his partner. Those words are Homra code for an urgent message: Run.

Yata is going to disregard the message – it isn’t in his nature to leave one of his behind, and he didn’t hear orders being given or the metallic clanging of guns, so maybe Kamamoto can still be retrieved – but as soon as he pokes his head out of the dormitory he’d been searching he sees that his partner has already been surrounded by a group of men in women in armored uniforms the same green as the walls. Although he has been restrained, he seems to be attempting to talk himself out of it – Yata doesn’t have high hopes for him, as charisma generally isn’t Kamamoto’s strong suit – but Yata recognizes it for what it is: His partner is distracting the security detail so that Yata can continue the mission.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, hopes for Kamamoto’s safety until he can rescue him later, and dashes down the hall in the opposite direction of his partner and the guards – and the only exit. The hall gets darker down this way, and, if it’s possible, even more humid, as if the thick concrete walls somehow welcome the moisture from the ground inside like an old friend. After a while, Yata has to turn his flashlight on, and he continues searching the floors and walls for traps as well as ladders, doors, elevators, or anything that might take him to a lower level. He hasn’t found any evidence of a drug lab or storage area or anything of the sort, but he figures either they cleared it out already (clearly they knew to expect company, somehow) or it’s all closer to the basement level. He needs to get down there before the guards figure out Kamamoto wasn’t alone.

When he turns another corner, he almost trips over an uneven spot on the floor. He looks down. It’s a latch attached to a wooden panel. _Score_ , Yata thinks, reaching down the tug on the handle, wary of any traps it might trigger, but it comes up with no issue. Peering down into the hole revealed, he can’t see anything even with his flashlight, but there is a ladder. He nods to himself, taking out an emergency glowstick from his pack and hanging it from the ladder so he can find his way back here, puts his flashlight between his teeth to free up his hands, and descends.

Right away he can feel the difference in temperature. It’s _cold_ down here – bone-chilling cold, the kind that seeps through the thickest layers of clothing and can’t be chased away even by the warmest fire. Yata shivers, looking around in confusion; he can still feel the heat and humidity bleeding out from the entrance he came from above him. This means the floor he’s on now must be completely isolated from the ones above it, or else there would be some sort of thermal equilibrium between the levels. He keeps climbing down, down, down, until he knows he’s gone further down than just a single floor or even two, until, when his feet finally do touch down hard and loud on the concrete of what must be the basement, Yata is almost surprised he hasn’t found himself at the center of the earth.

Releasing his hands from the ladder to grab the flashlight, Yata takes stock of his surroundings, immediately spotting a light switch to his right and flicking it on. For a moment, nothing happens; then, flickering reluctantly as if they’re being woken from a deep hibernation, the low glow of lights hanging on chains from the ceiling illuminate the room.

What he sees is not as bad as what he was expecting. There are no blood stains on the walls, no shackles nailed to the walls just high enough so a person of normal height couldn’t touch the ground, no racks of knives or fire pokers, not even any beakers or vials or any of the sort of tools he usually expects to see in a cartel’s main drug production facility. There are cells, though – small, hard rooms behind rusted but thick metal bars which form lattice shapes like a chessboard over the uncannily emerald green walls. Yata imagines the test subjects that must have been kept here, imagines this being all they knew. He shudders at the thought.

But for all he swore he could hear their misery, he can’t hear anything now except the dripping of moisture down the lengths of the cell bars. He looks left and right, both ways down the hallway he finds himself in the middle of. There are endless rows of cells both ways. He closes his eyes, listens to his instincts, realizes something in him is screaming at him to go left, and so he listens.

Several minutes pass with Yata moving warily down the hall, flashlight flicking wall to wall and floor to ceiling and ears peeled for any sound, leaving glowsticks behind every so often so he can find his way back since he has yet to see another way in or out of this area. He has gotten so used to the monotony of these tasks that when the clatter comes, a clanging of metal against something equally hard, Yata nearly jumps out of his skin. He pulls himself together quickly and starts moving toward the noise instead.

The clanging continues, guiding him to its source. It sounds like something – or someone – is hitting the metal bars of a cell with a bat, and if it is a someone rather than a something, Yata needs to make sure it is not themselves they are using as a bat. He runs faster, almost slipping on the damp floor a few times, until he finally reaches a corner around which the sound is louder than ever.

Cautiously, he draws his gun and eases himself around the corner, keeping to the shadows as best he can; he doesn’t want to startle the person, if it is a person, but his own safety needs to come first. The origin of the clanging becomes clear: In the cell around the corner, all on its own in contrast to the rows of repeating cells in the other halls, is a man kneeling on the floor facing his cell bars, and against them he bangs…his own fingernails?

Yata is so confused he lets out a gasp, and the man, whose face had been tilted down to watch his own hands against the bars, tips his head up toward Yata, who gasps again, this time in a disorienting mix of terror and relief.

The man is…it’s Saruhiko.

But it _can’t_ be Saruhiko. His old friend was taken months ago from another special investigative unit – Scepter 4, which is both a rival and a close partner of Homra – by Jungle during a dangerous undercover mission he had volunteered for (volunteered for, but Yata has never forgiven their captain, Munakata, for agreeing to send one of his own into enemy ranks). They had thought him, _assumed_ him dead; they had mourned him, and Yata had been devastated despite his friend’s defection to Scepter 4, that the person he was so close to was gone, that there was no chance, now, of even throwing taunts his way ever again, much less rebuilding their compromised friendship. But the man in front of him now is unmistakably Saruhiko, even with his glasses apparently missing, and Yata’s heart thunders in his chest as he takes in the familiar deep blue eyes and delicate cheekbones and tall, thin frame; he had finally accepted these were things he would never see again, and he can’t help the choked-out whisper of the man’s name that escapes his lips.

Saruhiko’s eyes widen, and Yata registers the confusion in them at the same time he realizes they are not the dark blue they should be at all. Instead, his irises are an inky black that swallows his pupils until there is no distinction between them. This is somehow less shocking than the fact that Saruhiko doesn’t seem to recognize his own name, and Yata says it again, louder this time, the last syllable lifting off his tongue so it sounds like a question, but he only gets a confused look in response again.

Yata lowers his gun, disheartened, but he still can’t just leave Saruhiko here, whether or not any of the real Saruhiko is left in him. He moves closer to his old friend, telling him who he is, telling him, _it’s me, Saruhiko, remember? It’s Yata, it’s Misaki, I finally found you, I thought you were_ – and then he stops moving because Saruhiko has drawn himself up to his full height, taking a defensive stance, and then literal fucking _wings_ sprout from either side of his upper back.

Yata’s gun clatters to the ground in an uncanny imitation of the sound that led him to Saruhiko in the first place. He knows some of what Jungle has developed – has seen much of it firsthand, has tried to forget much of what he has seen – but this is another level of fucked up. They had figured out pretty quickly this facility was used to test newly developed drugs on experimental subjects, mostly kidnapped civilians, but a captured member of an elite special investigative unit must have been too tempting to resist for the twisted leaders of Jungle, and Yata thinks he is now witnessing the results of this. And he remembers, too, folders full of experimental formulas Homra discovered at their last Jungle drug bust; drugs to imbue subjects with certain animal qualities, drugs to extend life at the cost of reason, and drugs to recreate creatures from myth and legend. Creatures – and Yata observes again the wings, the eyes void of color, the accentuated, beautiful facial features, the deadly nails – such as the incubus. 

And then Saruhiko spreads his arms, making himself look even bigger, and their paleness accentuates the _blackness_ of his wings. He looks ready to strike with his terrible hardened fingernails, but all Yata can see are the black silhouettes of veins stenciled onto the insides of Saruhiko’s elbows where an IV might be stuck – or an injection of something terrible might be administered. As he observes what those bastards have done to Saruhiko, he backs away a little, slowly and as non-threateningly as he can, still speaking quietly, low murmurs of Saruhiko’s name and whispered reminders of who he himself is, how he’s here to help, not to hurt.

That same confused, searching look from before appears on his face again, and his brow furrows as if he’s trying to remember something important. Yata doesn’t know what they’ve done to him (though he knows what he’ll do to them, if he ever finds them – he’ll _break_ them, he’ll fucking – ) but it seems Saruhiko has managed to keep some part of himself nonetheless. Yata feels proud of him in a twisted sort of way, and uses his moment of almost-recognition to take a slow step towards him and say softly, “I want to help you. We need to get out of here. How do we get out of here?”

Saruhiko lowers him arms, then, regarding Yata with those unsettlingly dark eyes, and Yata thinks again of his earlier revelation, of what Saruhiko might be now – or at least until they can figure out how to reverse it (if anyone can figure it out, it’s the two of them, right?). He looks again at the new features, the unfamiliar parts of him that Yata’s brain connects to those mythical demons, and his eyes see all of this but his brain cannot connect what his eyes see to the friend he remembers. But if Saruhiko really is an incubus, then he has so much power – power that cannot be unleased unless someone willingly enters into some sort of pact with him, so that they may share power, and Yata is just processing this, reconciling the realization with what it would mean (if it is him – and who else could it be? – then they would have to kiss, would have to touch, and Yata isn’t opposed to this, has never been opposed to this, but Saruhiko isn’t…Saruhiko doesn’t…he doesn’t _remember_ …)

He is almost too busy fighting down the flush on his face to hear the quiet whisper of his name, a soft, “Misaki,” not really a question but said like he’s sounding out the letters for the first time, said like he’s never sounded out letters before at all, and Yata’s heart breaks at the familiar (but different, so different) voice even as hope flares in his chest. If they can communicate, then – 

A loud clamber from around the corner and down the hall snaps him out of his thoughts. It is coming from back the way he came, and then he hears footsteps and shouting, and _fuck_ , he thinks, _the glowsticks_. Beside him, Saruhiko has drawn himself out to his full size again, wings and arms spread, and he’s nearly snarling in the direction of the noise, but when the metallic clang of a gun hilt hitting the stone wall echoes down the hallway, he flinches, and that is fear now in his eyes.

Yata springs into action.

“Saruhiko,” he calls urgently, not bothering to be quiet anymore; they’ve already been discovered, and now haste is the most important thing. “If you are what I think you are…we need to make a pact. Right now, Saruhiko. We need to make a pact and then we need to get out of here, and we can’t do it without each other, you have no power without a willing person and I don’t know how to get out of here and even if I did _I’m not leaving without you_ – “

He’s cut off by a cool grip on his wrist. Saruhiko is looking at him intently, staring into his eyes, and despite the coldness of his hands Saruhiko’s gaze warms Yata so much (all he ever wanted before was this man’s eyes on him, this man’s attention, this man’s – ) that he almost misses his slow chanting, said under his breath in words that get swallowed by the humid air but with red lips that part over them and with eyes that never leave Yata’s, and then something shifts in him, and he can _feel_ Saruhiko as if his friend has moved aside Yata’s insides and made room for himself there, and as soon as he has that thought Saruhiko dissipates before his eyes and then Yata gasps because now he can feel Saruhiko inside him not only spiritually but _physically_ , and then a voice in his head that sounds like Saruhiko says, calmly, “Misaki. Run,” and Yata does.

-

Yata is panting heavily by the time he can see the sun again, but he doesn’t feel tired. He has never felt more exhilarated in his life. He feels so fast (sprinting through the halls at supernatural speed, twisting and turning through the cells in the basement and somehow knowing exactly where to turn next), so powerful (the crack of bone against stone walls and floors, moving in and out of the shadows as if he’s not fighting them but part of them, and thrum of Saruhiko’s inky black, intoxicating power in his head and all his limbs), so _unstoppable_. He cannot help it; he laughs out loud, and it feels even better when he feels Saruhiko’s echo if it inside him.

And – oh, fuck – Saruhiko is _inside_ him, and he chokes on his laughter, feeling his face heat and his body start to react despite the situation they’re in. He doesn’t even notice when the intrusion of the demon – though he’s already stopped thinking of Saruhiko as a demon, if he ever did, and it doesn’t feel like an intrusion anymore so much as a welcome guest, a missing piece, an old friend – disappears from within him until he hears another call of his name, this time heard in his ears and not his mind, and whips around with a still-burning face to see Saruhiko now in the flesh in front of him.

He still has that searching look on his face, but his eyes reflect the exhilaration Yata feels, and he’s wearing a smirk that suggests he knows exactly what Yata is thinking – which, shit, he probably does; he had Saruhiko’s voice in his head, after all, so he probably knows his thoughts too. But then Yata notices how pale he looks, and barely moves in time to catch him as his knees buckle and he gives in to gravity.

His mouth is spouting questions faster than his head can come up with them – “Shit, Saruhiko, are you okay, what happened, what can I do, how can I fix it” – when he remembers the pact, and then asks instead, blushing furiously, “Oh, you need…shit, Saruhiko.” He feels so hot, and he _wants_ this, so much, but Saruhiko still doesn’t remember, but he looks like he’s about to _die_ , so Yata finally blurts, “Do you want me to kiss you?”

Saruhiko looks up at him warily from where he’s slumped in Yata’s arms, and Yata’s face heats even more; his gaze is so _penetrating_ , and then _fuck_ , he has to blush even _harder_ at the thought. But Saruhiko clicks his tongue, making Yata’s heart clench with the familiarity, and turns away from him, facing down at the grass instead, and says, “I’m fine. Misaki.”

But he’s not fine, and Yata isn’t going to let him get away with not taking care of himself like he did when he was…well, himself. (It seems not so much of the real Saruhiko was lost, after all, even if he doesn’t _remember_.) And Yata provided food for him before, tried to get him to eat properly, and he’ll do it again, provide sustenance for Saruhiko, even if the sustenance he needs now is…less innocent.

But if Saruhiko needs it, and Yata wants it, then even if it’s not the real Saruhiko, then it should be okay, right?

So he calls his friend’s name again, softly, fondly. “Saruhiko,” he says. “Saru.” And he’d almost forgotten, what it felt like to have this man’s gaze on him, but he remembers all at once as their eyes meet; he’d almost forgotten, how it felt for their hands and bodies to touch, but it comes back to him as their fingers intertwine; he’s almost forgotten, what it was like when their lips slotted together, but it all comes flooding back with Saruhiko’s mouth brushing his, Saruhiko’s tongue running along the seam of his lips, Saruhiko’s breath flooding into his mouth in a rush, and he kisses just like the old Saruhiko, so that Yata almost forgets that he isn’t, not really. He lets himself have this, lets them hold each other as the sun he’d almost forgotten about caresses their hair and their backs. They are so close that he feels it both under his palms and within himself when the effects of the kiss hit Saruhiko, and he pulls back, watching his skin flush with color and the black in his eyes retreat as if chased, giving way to that deep, beautiful blue. He looks, now, exactly like his friend, exactly like Saruhiko, and then he whispers Yata’s name again, his voice breathy and gorgeous, “Misaki,” and Yata cannot do anything against it; he takes Saruhiko’s hands in his again and pulls him forward and Saruhiko meets him in the middle, and Yata lets him muscle memory take over as he refamiliarizes himself with his oldest friend’s touch.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading ^.^ comments and feedback appreciated as always


End file.
